Locally owned businesses can help communities thrive | Grist

Cities where small businesses account for a relatively large share of the economy have stronger social networks and more engaged citizens.

Source: Locally owned businesses can help communities thrive — and survive climate change | Grist

Let’s bracket out the “climate change” part of this, not because the climate isn’t changing – it is – but because intelligent people of good will can disagree on the extent to which those changes are anthropogenic (human-caused) and how much is due to natural cycles over which we have limited or no control. Obsessing over climate change can make enemies out of people who might otherwise be allies. Let’s just focus on doing the right thing, thereby generating positive, synergistic effects that will, in the main, benefit all of us, whether global warming is anthropogenic or not.

Case in point: I first ran across this article back in the dim and distant past (2013…), but the message is no less important, four years later! When I posted it on my Facebook account, I wrote, quoting the article,

“That there’s a connection between the ownership structure of our economy and the vitality of our democracy may sound a bit odd to modern ears. But this was an article of faith among 18th- and 19th-century Americans, who strictly limited the lifespan of corporations and enacted antitrust laws whose express aim was to protect democracy by maintaining an economy of small businesses.” Unfortunately, the bigger-is-better mindset of the 20th century blew this traditional American concept out of the water…

Indeed it did. And sadly so!

Our Founders – preeminently Thomas Jefferson, but others as well – were clear that the United States was intended to be a nation of smallholders: yeoman farmers, shopkeepers, tradesmen. They were staunch defenders of both private property and free enterprise, but having had to deal with the effects of oppression not only by the British Crown but by the East India Company, among others, they were understandably chary of giving corporations too much power. The kind of crony capitalism, corporatism, plutocracy and oligarchy we see today would, I am quite sure, have been anathema to them.

8 reasons constitutional monarchy is the best form of government • The Crown Chronicles

Many people say that having a Monarch as Head of State is good for tourism, but not much else. But, hang on, aren’t Monarchies cheaper than Presidencies? Yes.  And doesn’t having a King or Queen ensure that there cannot be a dictatorship? Yes!  So why is monarchy good? Here are 8 reasons why constitutional monarchy is the best form of government…

Source: 8 reasons constitutional monarchy is the best form of government • The Crown Chronicles

Can’t argue with anything here! An excellent essay, entirely. 🙂

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N.B. The article notes,

“While a number of examples relate specifically to the British Monarchy, most of these reasons are applicable to the other Monarchies of the world, and we have tried to include some broader examples and statistics.”

What women really want is the patriarchy | The Sacred Feminine

“Women have blindly followed the feminist mantra and now find themselves lonely and confused. It’s time to welcome back the patriarchy.” I discovered this article on The Federalist …

Source: What women really want is the patriarchy | The Sacred Feminine

I discovered this article on The Federalist and I have to say that it is spot on. It accurately describes problems that women and men face, why modern relationships do not work out and how it hurts the traditional family model…

Men and women both need to ditch this feminist propaganda and find their way back to their true selves. This is the only way we can have secure and happy families with both parties feeling self-fulfillment and knowing that their role is just as important as the other’s.

Interesting (if provocative) reflections on the original essay by the same name, from the author of the blog, “The Sacred Feminine.” Read it – and then click through to the original.

Sultan Knish: The One Lesson of the Holocaust

Yom HaShoah comes and goes. A day for looking back at what has happened and a day for looking away from what will happen.

Source: Sultan Knish: The One Lesson of the Holocaust

Millions of dollars have been spent building memorials to the victims of the Holocaust, even as Iran is spending its millions on building another kind of memorial to the Holocaust, in the form of nuclear technology that will be used to finish that piece of history that the Islamic terror state claims never took place.

Millions more are spent, by some of the same groups that claim an interest in Holocaust education, on bringing Muslim migrants to America and Europe to carry out the promise of an Islamic apocalypse in which, as the Hadith states, “The last hour would not come unless the Muslims will fight against the Jews and the Muslims would kill them until the Jews would hide themselves behind a stone or a tree and a stone or a tree would say: Muslim, or the servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me; come and kill him.”

That is what the Islamic Holocaust looks like. And it’s underway...

Monday, April 24th, of this year marked Holocaust Remembrance Day – Yom HaShoah – in Israel (it actually began at sundown on the 23rd). In this blog essay, Daniel Greenfield offers some interesting and provocative reflections on the significance of the Holocaust, and what we, collectively – and particularly, those on the political left – have failed to learn from it.